1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method for alternate circuiting, or routing, in bidirectional ATM cell transmission in a ring architecture.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method generally of the type described above is described in an unpublished German Patent application DE 19646016.6. In this known method, transmission equipment are provided for the bidirectional transmission of ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) cells, whereby two switching equipment which function as terminal points are connected to one another via a working entity and a protection entity. The two terminal points respectively contain a monitoring means for detecting transmission disturbances. A switch means that is controllable by the monitoring means connects the receiving terminal point to the working entity in a first switch condition and to the protection entity in a second switch condition. Control information are exchanged between the control devices of the two terminal points. The switch means is respectively controlled by the local monitoring means depending on local control criteria and on control criteria contained in the control information received from the cooperating location.
What is disadvantageous about the know method is that only the alternate circuiting, or routing, of transmission equipment between two terminal points is addressed. Since ring architectures are generally employed in a subscriber line network, this method cannot be employed in such networks.